Can't select sparseimage as source!

[mirkwood]

Something is really wacky here. This worked earlier today, but now I can't do this:

I created a sparseimage of my system drive, the sparseimage is on a firewire drive. I want to now copy that sparseimage to another firewire drive so that it overwrites the target drive, ie make a bootable firewire drive.

However I cannot select the sparseimage that I created as the source disk image! It is greyed out in the file browser that pops up. If I rename the sparseimage to use a .dmg extension, it will let me select it, but then SuperDuper fails to mount the image with the error:
Error | Couldn't mount source image

I can, however, mount the image just fine (as .sparseimage or .dmg) in OSX.

What is going on? Did my sparseimage get wacked? This worked fine earlier today when I selected a previous sparseimage, made from the same system drive, but I deleted it (long story) and made another one.

[dnanian]

Actually, even though it's grey, you can pick it. Do so, ignore the warnings, and you should be all set.

[mirkwood]

I can't select the image -- it won't let me. I can't highlight it with the mouse and get the "OK" button to light up, so I can't select it.

What's going on?

[dnanian]

You should be able to click on it, even though it's grey. If not, just re-enter its name once you're in the right folder.

[mirkwood]

No, I cannot click on it. It won't let me. If it's supposed to, then this is a bug.

I also have no place where I can enter the name manually.

This is the file browser dialog that I get:
http://www.mirkwood.com/yard/sd.jpg

Is there supposed to be a place to enter the filename manually somewhere?

Remember I'm trying to select the image as the source, not the destination, so it's a different file browser dialog.

[dnanian]

This is the "source" panel, not the "destination" one. You can't select a sparse image file as the source for a copy, only a mounted volume or a DMG.

[mirkwood]

Yes, this is the source panel... that's what the topic subject says, even......

Anyways, now that that's cleared up, why is the sparseimage greyed out in the destination panel anyways? Bug being fixed in the next release?

[dnanian]

Sorry about that... somehow I misread the original message. Long day.

The grey image in the destination panel is because we used the Save panel for select, too, to avoid another menu choice. It's not my finest hour... But fixing it is at a lower priority than some other items.

[mirkwood]

I know what you mean, it's been a long day for me too...and everything seems to want to rebel against me today.

Thanks for your quick responses!

[jay]

Hello,

From your question: "I want to now copy that sparseimage to another firewire drive so that it overwrites the target drive, ie make a bootable firewire drive."

A firewire drive can be bootable, but, not with a Sparseimage. You would have to select your second firewire drive as the destination, not "Disk Image". If you need to store other data on the same drive, it could be partitioned. Good luck!

jay

[mirkwood]

Hi Jay,

Not sure what you're getting at...I think you might have confused what I was asking about? I was chosing the second firewire drive as the destination. I wanted to use a disk image as the source. Which turns out that you just need to mount the sparseimage first, then choose the mounted image as the source (virtual) drive.

At any rate it's all resolved now.

[rschletty]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Sorry about that... somehow I misread the original message. Long day.

The grey image in the destination panel is because we used the Save panel for select, too, to avoid another menu choice. It's not my finest hour... But fixing it is at a lower priority than some other items.

I have encountered this same problem. My backup script is now failing. "Unable to mount sparseimage." I am trying to rebuild the script.

OK, after re-selecting a grayed out sparseimage, I was able to run the script. SD mounted the problem sparseimage. Here's the weird thing: The destination sparse image no longer has a matching name. The number 1 is appended to the volume name. It seems that SD is still keeping track of the original sparseimage somehow.

Problem has been solved in another thread. I should be good to go, now that I have deleted the original "SG Mac OS X" alias in /Volumes. I will reboot, then rebuild the script again. The script using destination sparseimage "SG Mac OS X 1" worked fine. So I am confident I can get SD back to showing matching source and destination names. Lesson learned: do not force-quit SuperDuper.

Retrospect does allow one to both pause and quit a back-up session gracefully.

[dnanian]

SuperDuper! has a "stop" button that allows you to stop gracefully, too. Force quit is just that: a force quit. Not graceful.

[rschletty]

Originally Posted by dnanian

SuperDuper! has a "stop" button that allows you to stop gracefully, too. Force quit is just that: a force quit. Not graceful.

The force-quit that I had done was only a few seconds after the backup script launched. It came at a time when my PPC G4 was already being maxed out by some other stuff I was doing. I wanted to dismiss the backup quickly. I can only assume that this hasty action caused the problem with the script not being able to mount the sparseimage the next day. Or did it have something to do with Apple Software Update being in "Reboot Now" mode after doing a Safari update in Mac OS X 10.4.11?

The message that you get with Stop in SuperDuper is not so graceful:

"Stopping now will leave [Volume Name] in an unknown state."

That's a very scary message.

Can you add a pause button in a future release?

[dnanian]

It's something I've considered, but at present I'm not convinced that it's a good -- and by that I mean necessary -- idea.